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IN THE SHADOW THEY WERE 
COMFORTED TO KNOW 
THAT THE GREAT FRIEND 
HAD THEM BY THE HAND 




THE WAY OF PRAYER 



THE WAY OF PRAYER 



BY 

JOHN EDGAR McFADYEN, D.D. 

Professor of Old Testament Language, Literature and 
Theology, United Free Church College, Glasgow 






Y 






THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON NEW TORE CHICAGO 



^A* 



>H« 



Copyright, 1910 
By Luther H. Cart 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 
All rights reserved 

Published September 1, 1910 



©CLA271380 



THE •PLIMPTON 'PRESS 

[W • D • o] 
NORWOOD • MASS . U • S • A 






IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

THHE great fact of the Old Testament is 
the fact of God. Amid all life's un- 
certainties He was to the devout Hebrew 
the supreme certainty, the great Person 
with whom one had always to reckon. 
His presence might be radiantly manifested 
in the material blessings of this life — in 
the grain, the wine, and the oil, in peace 
and prosperity, and other such things dear 
to the ancient Hebrew heart; or He might 
seem to stand afar off and hide His face. 
But always He was felt to be somewhere; 
happiness lay in being near Him, and His 
friendship was the most precious thing 
in the world. 

Thus nothing could be more natural 
to the Hebrew than prayer. God was 
the great Friend, and men spoke to Him 
as readily and as naturally as they spoke 
to their earthly friends. He could listen 
like an earthly friend; He could answer, 
too, and help, as no human friend could do, 
just because He was God and not man. 
There is something very beautiful and 
touching about the speech of men to God 
in the Old Testament. In the later books 



6 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

it tends to become more set and solemn, 
as did the religion generally; but more 
or less, from the beginning to the end, 
there is about it a quaint and charming 
simplicity, which is only possible to men 
who have the heart and the faith of a little 
child. What could be more attractive, 
for example, than the prayer of Abraham's 
servant, when he has at last reached the 
far country, where he hopes to find a 
wife for his master's son? "Behold, I 
am standing by the fountain of water: 
and the daughters of the men of the city 
are coming out to draw water. And let 
it come to pass, that the damsel to whom 
I shall say, 'Let down thy pitcher, I pray 
thee, that I may drink'; and she shall 
say, 'Drink, and I will give thy camels 
drink also,' let the same be she that thou 
hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; 
and thereby shall I know that thou hast 
showed kindness unto my master" 
(Gen. xxiv. 13, 14). This naive fixing 
of the sign by which the maiden is to 
be recognized was no doubt more possible 
to an ancient man, with his simpler view 
of the world, than it would be to us; 
but through it gleams a fine faith in the 
Providence that governs human life. 
When, in the sequel, Rebekah appears 
on the scene, and does all that the servant 
had prayed that the maid of destiny should 






THE WAY OF PRAYER 7 

do, he "looked stedfastly on her" — what 
a world of significance is concentrated 
in that look! — "holding his peace, to 
know whether the Lord had made his 
journey prosperous or not." And now 
that he has the indubitable assurance 
that his journey has been indeed divinely 
led, he does not forget to thank the great 
Lord and Guide of human life. "The 
man bowed his head and worshipped the 
Lord, and said: 'Blessed be the Lord, 
the God of my master Abraham, who 
hath not forsaken his lovingkindness and 
his truth toward my master. As for me, 
the Lord hath led me in the way to the 
house of my master's brethren. ' ' 

That is an early story; but the same 
simple faith is illustrated, centuries after, 
by a prayer of Ezra, offered when he and 
his company were on the point of starting 
for Palestine. He informs us that he 
had already told the Persian king that the 
God of the Hebrews protected those who 
trusted Him; and so, he tells us, he "was 
ashamed to ask of the king a band of sol- 
diers and horsemen to help us against the 
enemy in the way." It is surely a very 
practical faith which refuses a military es- 
cort over a long and dangerous road. In 
simple faith the little company therefore 
committed themselves to God "to seek 
of him a straight way for us, and for our 






8 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

little ones, and for all our substance." 
And their faith was rewarded: for "he 
was entreated of us," "and the hand of our 
God was upon us, and he delivered us from 
the hand of the enemy and the lier-in-wait 
by the way" (Ezra viii. 21, 23, 31). 

Equally significant of the place and 
power of prayer in the life of a devout 
Hebrew is the incident which Nehemiah, 
Ezra's contemporary, recounts of his 
appearance before the Persian king, in 
order to crave permission to return to his 
native land and restore her fallen fortunes. 
The king asked him to name his request. 
It is a moment of peculiar tension; it is 
of the gravest importance that Nehe- 
miah say the right thing. "So I prayed 
to the God of Heaven. And I said to 
the king, 'If it please the king,'" etc. 
(Neh. ii. 4, 5). He steadies his soul by a 
swift and silent prayer, which is a most 
eloquent witness to the quality of his 
inner life. And he, like Ezra, has his 
reward: "The king granted me, according 
to the good hand of my God upon me." 
Nehemiah was a man of action and 
enterprise, but this incident is only one 
of many which show that all his work was 
done in an atmosphere of prayer and 
piety. When, for example, provoked by 
the rapid progress which, under Nehemiah's 
direction, was being made in the rebuild- 




THE WAY OF PRAYER 9 

ing of the walls of Jerusalem, the enemies 
of the Jews were planning an assault 
upon the city, "We made our prayer unto 
God, and set a watch against them day 
and night" (iv. 9). And again he bids 
the men whom he has organized for the 
defence of the city, "remember the Lord, 
who is great and terrible, and fight" 
(iv. 14). 

These last two illustrations are character- 
istic of the best Hebrew piety, to which 
work was felt to be no less indispensable 
than prayer. The men who prayed also 
knew how to watch and fight. There is 
always a healthy contact with reality, a 
keen sense of responsibility, and prayer 
is never made an excuse for inactivity. 
The great men of action in Hebrew history 
are usually also men of prayer. Moses 
was the great leader in the events which 
launched the Hebrew people upon their 
wonderful career; and again and again 
he appears in the narrative praying — sig- 
nificantly enough, usually for his guilty 
or stricken people. David, man of enter- 
prise and battles as he was, was also a 
man of prayer. In the nature of the case, 
little is said about this in the books of 
Samuel, but much may be inferred from 
the simple statements that, in an hour 
of peril, "David strengthened himself in 
Jehovah his God" (1 Sam. xxx, 6); and, 



/fSS Sfe 



10 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

in the dark days of Absalom's rebellion, 
he humbly yet hopefully committed his 
case to God (2 Sam. xvi. 12). 

The passion with which the ancient 
Hebrew could address God receives its 
supreme illustration in Job and Jeremiah. 
Religion, with its agonies of struggle and 
of hope, is perhaps more intensely expressed 
in these men than in any other men of the 
Old Testament; and it is no accident that 
it is just the prayers of these men that 
reach heights of almost incredible audacity. 
Job (xxi.) vehemently challenges the whole 
moral order of the world, and passionately 
demands an audience with God. Jere- 
miah (xx. 7) charges God with beguiling 
him — him who was but a child — into his 
awful prophetic mission, in which his 
fate was to become a laughing-stock all 
the day. But such wild utterances only 
show how real God was to these men, how 
fearfully their faith had been perplexed 
by their experiences, and how passionately 
they longed to behold God as their Vindi- 
cator and their Friend. They spoke as 
they did because to them God was every- 
thing. They had nothing else in the 
world and they must be sure of Him; and 
very precious must have been the moments 
when such men found Him again, and knew 
Him to be in truth their "refuge in the 
day of evil" (Jer. xvii. 17). 



1^ 



THE WAY OF PRAYER 11 

Prayers of every kind are represented 
in the Old Testament — petition, inter- 
cession, confession, thanksgiving. The 
outlook of the prayers, as of the Old 
Testament religion generally, is for the 
most part confined to this world. The 
earth on which they lived and moved 
was the Lord's, and here, if anywhere, 
they must find Him. What religion suffered 
by having her gaze thus practically with- 
drawn from the future world, she gained 
by having to concentrate it all the more 
powerfully upon the symbols of God's 
presence and goodness in this. Hence the 
predominance of prayers and aspirations 
in the Old Testament for earthly things — 
for food and drink and raiment, for the 
dew of heaven and the fatness of the 
earth, for crops and cattle, for corn and 
wine, for riches, honor, and long life, for 
peace, population, and prosperity, for 
victory and national glory, for deliverance 
from danger, sickness, and death. It 
would be easy to do less than justice to 
these seemingly materialistic aspirations. 
They come from the heart, not of material- 
ists, but of profoundly religious men who 
saw in these things the gifts of their God, 
the shining symbols of His grace, and who 
therefore looked beyond the gifts to the 
Giver; or if they failed to do this, it was 
not for want of many a warning. But 



12 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

apart from this, there were prayers, as 
the religion developed, for other and higher 
things, for wisdom and understanding, 
for a clean heart and a right spirit, for 
deliverance from every crooked way and 
divine guidance in the way everlasting; 
and so completely had some of the later 
Hebrews shaken themselves free from the 
materialism which had clung to the earlier 
religion that they gladly express their 
joy in God even when fig-tree and vine, 
flock and field, and all the customary 
tokens of the divine presence and blessing 
are withdrawn (Hab. iii. 17, 18). 

It is curious and significant that most 
of the intercessory prayers alluded to in 
the Old Testament are offered by prophets. 
We think of these men chiefly as preachers, 
proclaiming the divine demands with 
mighty and insistent voice; but there is 
not a little to show, as indeed we might 
have guessed, that they were also men of 
prayer, who habitually pled before God 
for their sinful people. Moses, Samuel, 
Elijah, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah were all 
intercessors, and what is true of them was 
no doubt true of all. Jeremiah tells us 
himself how he stood before God to speak 
good for the people and to turn away the 
divine wrath from them (xviii. 20); and 
to Moses is ascribed the sublime prayer, 
"Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, 



THE WAY OF PRAYER 13 

and have made them gods of gold. Yet 
now, if thou wilt forgive their sin — ; and 
if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy 
book which thou hast written" (Exod. 
xxxii. 31, 32). The prophets seem to have 
charged themselves with the duty of 
intercession (cf. 1 Sam. vii. 5, xii. 23); 
they had pled with God for the people 
before they appeared to plead with the 
people for God. 

The sense of sin was deeply developed 
in Israel by the experience of exile; and 
partly on this account, no doubt, con- 
fessions of sin are much more elaborate 
and prominent in the later literature than 
in the earlier. The earnestness with which 
it was confessed, at least on one historic 
occasion, is attested by an interesting 
passage in Ezra: "I rent my garment 
and my robe, and plucked off the hair 
of my head and of my beard, and sat down 
confounded. . . . And at the evening 
oblation I arose up from my humiliation, 
even with my garment and my robe rent; 
and I fell upon my knees, and spread out 
my hands unto the Lord my God, and I 
said, ' O my God, I am ashamed and blush 
to lift up my face to thee, my God; for our 
iniquities are increased over our head, and 
our guiltiness is grown up unto the heav- 
ens '" (ix. 3-6). 

The Hebrews worshipped a God who 



?£8£ : 



14 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

had often done great things for them, 
whereof they were glad, and many a time, 
both as a nation and as individuals, they 
must have offered to Him prayers and songs 
of thanksgiving. Many such songs are 
in the Psalter — for individual deliverance 
from sickness and danger, for national deliv- 
erance from exile and war. How integral 
a part of religion thanksgiving was felt 
to be, is well illustrated in the description 
of Daniel, who is said to have "kneeled 
upon his knees three times a day, and 
prayed, and given thanks before his God" 
(vi. 10). It is also curious that the only 
prayer that is formally prescribed in the 
Old Testament is a prayer of thanksgiving 
to be offered by the worshipper after he 
has set down his basket of first-fruits 
before the altar (Deut. xxvi. 1-10), 
Nowhere is the humility of true gratitude 
expressed with more exquisite simplicity 
than in the prayer of Jacob: "I am not 
worthy of the least of all the love and of 
all the faithfulness, which thou hast 
showed unto thy servant" (Gen. xxxii. 10). 
The men whose prayers speak to us 
from the pages of the Old Testament were 
men who were familiar with all the 
checkered experiences of life; they knew 
its gladness and its pain, they had been 
surprised and tempted and tried, like 
as we. They knew what was in man; 



THE WAY OF PRAYER 15 

that is why their words so come home to 
our hearts, and why even today we can 
make them our own. The valley through 
which they passed was often one of 
deepest shadow, but they were comforted 
to know that the great Friend had them 
by the hand. To them sorrow was real, 
but God was no less real; His mercy and 
His love were as palpable as the mountains 
and the great sea. He was like a father 
who pities his little children, and hears 
them when they cry; only infinitely 
greater than any human father, for He 
was the Maker of heaven and earth, and 
His years know no end. His tender mercies 
were felt to be over all His works, and well 
might men commit their lives to Him 
with quietness and confidence, and say 
to Him out of a full heart, "My times 
are in thy hand." "Thou art my refuge and 
my fortress, my God in whom I trust." 

Sometimes indeed this peace came only 
after a long, fierce struggle. Often it was 
only after the feet had slipped on the 
cruel, weary way, that there came the 
assurance that God was ever with His 
faithful servants, holding them by the 
right hand (Ps. lxxiii. 2, 23). But the 
prayers of such men are immortal, because 
they have grasped the eternal realities. 
Amid all sorrow and pain, amid all con- 
fusion and change, they still believe in 






16 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

the merciful and unchanging God, and 
out of the depths they can lift up their 
sorrowful faces to Him with the believing 
prayer : 

" Unto thee do I lift up mine eyes, 
O thou that sittest in the heavens. 
Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of 

their master, 
As the eyes of a maid unto the hand of her mistress; 
So our eyes look unto the Lord our God, 
Until he have mercy upon us." 



IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 

TF God is the great fact of the Old Testa- 
ment, Christ is no less the great fact 
of the New. Not, of course, that He has 
displaced God — that could never be; but 
He revealed Him — revealed Him so com- 
pletely that He and the Father, though 
distinct, were felt to be one. What God 
is to the writers of the New Testament, He 
is through Christ. The only communion 
with God possible — for them at least — is 
through Him. Christians are described by 
Peter as men "who through Christ are 
believers in God." In the Old Testa- 
ment men approached and addressed God 
directly; in the New their communion 
is mediated through Christ. The New 
Testament is pervaded by a sense not 
only of the supremacy but of the indis- 
pensableness of Jesus. In Jesus all things 
had become new — not only the world, but 
even God Himself. Their previous appre- 
hension of God, in comparison with their 
apprehension of Him in Jesus, was, in a 
sense, but as rumor to vision. 

I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; 
But now — in Jesus — mine eye seeth thee. 

Prayer is even offered in the New Testa- 

17 




/& 









18 THE WAY OF PRAYER 



ment, though rarely, to Jesus. Stephen 
dies his martyr death with a prayer to 
the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit; and 
the prayer, " Come, Lord Jesus/' must often 
have risen from the torn but expectant 
hearts of the early Christians. 

So stupendous is the place occupied 
by the risen Lord in their imagination 
and experience that the resources of 
language are exhausted to describe it. 
His is the name that is above every name. 
He is far above all rule and authority, 
not only in this world, but in that which 
is to come. He is the image of the invisible 
God, the first-born of all creation, and in 
Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily. He is the one through whom all 
things are, who sits at God's right hand 
in the heavenly places, the effulgence of 
His glory and the very image of His 
substance, upholding all things by the 
word of His power, the author of eternal 
salvation, the true light that lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world, the 
prince of life, the lord of glory, the giver 
of grace and peace. 

Considering, then, the sublime place 
accorded to Jesus by the faith of the 
early church, it becomes a matter of 
exceptional interest to ascertain how He 
prayed and what He taught about prayer 
in the days of His flesh. Like all His 



THE WAY OF PRAYER 19 

other words, His prayers were arresting. 
We are seldom indeed permitted to look 
into the intimacy of that lonely com- 
munion with His Father; but the few 
glimpses that we get justify us in believing 
that He who spake as never man spake, 
also prayed as never man prayed. Of 
one great occasion we are told that, "as 
he was praying, the fashion of his counte- 
nance was altered." He prayed with trans- 
figured face. How that face must have 
looked as the Master stood before the 
great, expectant multitudes sitting on 
the grass, and prayed, "looking up to 
heaven," for the Father's blessing on 
the five loaves and the two fishes! It 
is surely no surprise that the disciples 
should be anxious to learn the Master's 
secret, and that, as He was praying in a 
certain place, when He ceased, one of them 
said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray." 

In two parables — the parable of the 
friend who came at midnight, and the 
parable of the unjust judge — Jesus taught 
the duty of persistency in prayer. He 
who is in earnest will ask, seek, knock, 
and keep knocking, till the door is opened. 
Never was there earnestness like his. 
Whether or not the statement, omitted 
in many of the manuscripts, is literally 
true, as it well may be, that in the agony 
of His prayer in Gethsemane, " his sweat 












20 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

became as it were great drops of blood 
falling down upon the ground/' it is 
certainly true to the spirit of the situation, 
and is practically corroborated by the 
statement in the epistle to the Hebrews 
that "he offered up prayer and supplication 
with strong crying and tears." Doubtless 
there was never before in the prayers of 
Jesus the agony of that terrible hour, 
but there was always the same earnestness. 
Whole nights, when other men were 
sleeping, He spent in communion with 
His Father. After He had healed many 
that were sick with divers diseases, for 
example, we are told that, "a great while 
before day he rose up and went out and 
departed into a desert place and there 
prayed." The work of the day could 
only be done in the strength that came 
from the silence and communion of the 
night. 

The dying prayer of Jesus, "Father, 
into thy hands I commend my spirit," 
must have been the prayer of all His life. 
As it happens, however, the recorded 
prayers or allusions to prayer in the life 
of Jesus are nearly all connected with 
crises in His mission. In the supreme 
and solemn moments which came to Him, 
as they come to all of us, when a grave 
step has to be taken or a great peril faced, 
He sought with peculiar earnestness the 




THE WAY OF PRAYER 21 

fellowship of His Father. At the baptism, 
for example. With that, in a sense, His 
public career began; and so, says Luke, 
"when all the people were baptized, 
Jesus also having been baptized, and 
spraying, the Holy Spirit descended upon 
him." So again with His choice of the 
Twelve. Humanly speaking, the whole 
future of the kingdom of God — we might 
indeed say, of the world — depended upon 
the men He would select to perpetuate 
His work; so "he went out into the moun- 
tain to pray, and continued all night 
in prayer to God." So again with Peter's 
confession of Him as the Messiah. This 
was a moment of royal importance in 
the history of the Twelve, and Jesus 
selected it only after communing with 
His Father in heaven. "As he was praying 
apart, the disciples were with him; and 
he asked them, saying, 'Who do the 
multitudes say that I am? ' " Then follows 
the great confession. So it was, apparently, 
with all His miraculous acts of healing. 
It was only by prayer that devils could 
be cast out; only after "looking up to 
heaven" that He Himself would speak the 
emancipating word to the man who had 
been deaf and dumb. So it was in Geth- 
semane, when He fell on the ground and 
prayed that, if it were possible, the cup 
might pass from Him, but that the will 









22 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

of God be done. So it was on the cross, 
when, with His parting breath, He com- 
mended His spirit into His Father's hands. 
We see thus the mighty place occupied 
by prayer in the life of Jesus. What was 
the spirit of His prayer? All the different 
kinds of prayer offered by other men are 
offered by Jesus — all except confession. 
He confesses nothing because He has 
nothing to confess. But He thanks His 
Father, He prays for Himself, He intercedes 
for others. The note of thanksgiving 
which runs through the book of Revelation 
and the epistles of Paul was caught from 
the Master. The words " I thank thee, 
Father," were frequently upon His lips. 
He gave thanks for the bread that per- 
isheth; He gave thanks for the mystery of 
the divine will, which revealed itself to the 
simple-hearted. And what an intercessor 
Jesus must have been! He knew the 
frailty of our frame and remembered 
that we are dust, and he poured forth 
His great pitiful heart in pleadings, not 
only for waverers, like Peter, but even 
for the cruel men who nailed Him to His 
cross. When He prayed for Himself, we 
may be sure it was chiefly that the will 
of God might be fulfilled in Him. He 
did not indeed exclude material things 
from the scope of His prayer. He had 
taught His disciples to pray for their 



THE WAY OF PRAYER «3 

daily bread, and He Himself prayed that 
His cup of agony might pass from Him. 
But behind every specific petition was the 
desire that the divine will be done. "Take 
away this cup: yet not my will, but thine." 
The prayer we know as the Lord's 
prayer, though it is the disciples' prayer 
rather than the Lord's, mirrors better than 
anything else the mind of the Master 
upon prayer. It is so familiar to us that 
few of us know how wonderful it is. But 
for brevity and range, simplicity and 
depth, there is nothing like it in all the 
world. Its very first words carry us 
from our little selfish interests to the 
great universe where God has His home — 
the almighty God, yet the kind Father, 
my Father indeed, yet just because He 
is mine, the Father of other men as well, 
our Father. The simple words usher 
us into a goodly fellowship — fellowship 
with a God whom we can love as well 
as worship, fellowship too with a great 
multitude of brethren who depend, like 
ourselves, upon the good Father. Hallowed 
be the name of such a Father-God; His 
name, His character, all that concerns 
Him must be thought of and spoken of 
worthily, so that reverence shall flourish 
and irreverence forever disappear. His 
kingdom come — that kingdom whose 
coming meant righteousness, peace, and 









U THE WAY OF PRAYER 

joy for all the world. And in all things 
His will, not ours, be done — done swiftly 
and gladly as by the angels in heaven. 
From the wide prospect of the kingdom 
and the will of God, the prayer passes to 
the needs and frailties of men, the need 
of bread, the need of forgiveness, the need 
of being kept. It is refreshing to 
remember that our Lord so deliberately 
recognized the material basis of human 
life as He does in the petition for bread. 
There is no strained or unnatural idealism 
in the teaching of Jesus. Man does not 
live by bread alone, but neither can He 
live without it, and the prayer for it, 
and for other material things which are 
helpful or necessary in our efforts to 
fulfil the will of God, is thoroughly legiti- 
mate and Christian. Give us bread — not 
luxury, but sufficiency, bread for the day — 
a prayer which encourages in us a sense 
of daily dependence upon God. But we 
need forgiveness as well as bread. We 
have sinned against the good Father, 
and there can be no true life until we are 
at peace with Him, and the prayer reminds 
us that forgiveness is only possible to 
the man who is willing to forgive: the 
unforgiving remain unforgiven, We need 
to be forgiven for the past, and for the 
future we need to be kept from the tempta- 
tions into which we are too easily led by 



/*& 



THE WAY OF PRAYER 25 

the evil without and within. Forgive us, 
deliver us: in these simple cries our 
past and our future, with their sin and 
frailty, are gathered up and humbly 
committed to the pity and the power of 
the great Father in heaven. Then, when 
men are redeemed and set free from 
evil to do good, in some measure at 
least the Kingdom comes and the Will is 

Paul was the Master's greatest disciple, 
and in his sense of the urgency of prayer the 
disciple reflects the Master. Incidentally 
he tells us that he prayed ceaselessly, 
night and day exceedingly, and he charges 
his converts to do the same. As with 
Jesus, so with Paul the note of thanksgiving 
was very conspicuous. In everything 
prayer and supplication was to be blended 
with thanksgiving, as he told his Philip- 
pian friends. His exhortation to give 
thanks to God always for all things is 
but a reflex of the abounding gratitude 
of his own spirit. For all things — but 
most of all for Christ. Paul's heart leaps 
as he thinks of the victory which Christ 
had won over sin and death and of all the 
spiritual blessings which are shared by 
those who love him. Thanks be unto 
God, he rapturously cries, for His un- 
speakable gift! How wonderful Paul's 
thanksgiving was, and how deeply it 



26 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

puts most of us to shame, we can only 
fully realize when we remember the fierce, 
hard life he was compelled to lead for the 
gospel's sake, face to face repeatedly with 
danger and death. "Five times received 
I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I 
beaten with rods, once was I stoned, 
thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a 
day have I been in the deep; in journeyings 
often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, 
in perils from my countrymen, in perils 
from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, 
in perils in the wilderness, in perils in 
the sea, in perils among false brethren; 
in labor and travail, in watchings often, 
in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in 
cold and nakedness." Yet this is the 
man who rejoices evermore, conqueror 
and more than conqueror, because he is 
conscious of possessing the unspeakable 
gift. How real, how near, how dear 
must Christ have been to him, to have 
lifted him so easily and triumphantly 
over afflictions so manifold! 

In intercession, too, Paul is as great as 
in thanksgiving. He longed and prayed 
to God for the salvation of his brethren 
the Jews. Especially dear to his heart 
was the spiritual welfare of his converts. 
His "anxiety for all the churches" which 
he had founded expressed itself in inter- 
cessory prayer for their members, that 



THE WAY OF PRAYER 27 

the Lord might direct their hearts into 
the love of God and the patience of Christ, 
and give them peace at all times. He 
interceded for men so earnestly because 
he loved them so deeply. "God is my 
witness," he solemnly assures his beloved 
Philippians, "how I long after you all 
in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus"; 
and still more simply and touchingly, 
"I have you in my heart." To Paul's 
prayers for himself, no tinge of self-seeking 
attaches. When he prays for himself, it 
is only that he may become a fitter instru- 
ment and win a wider opportunity. His 
Sprayer for the removal of the thorn in 
the flesh was no doubt dictated rather by 
his anxiety for the welfare of the gospel 
than by any longing for personal ease 
or comfort. No doubt he regarded his 
physical disability, whatever it was, as 
an impediment to his evangelistic work; 
without it, his gospel might have run a 
freer and speedier course. But, though 
the thorn is not removed, Paul can still 
rejoice, for through his infirmity he learns 
a deeper experience of the grace and power 
of Christ, and that is sufficient. By 
carrying the gospel triumphantly through- 
out the world, he did perhaps the mightiest 
work for God that mortal man has ever 
done, and there surely is proof abundant 
that in his weakness he was indeed 






28 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

strengthened by Another and a Stronger 
than himself. 

Considering the glorious place of Christ 
in the faith and experience of the early 
church, is it any wonder that they blend 
His praises with the praises of God Himself, 
saying with a loud voice, "Unto him that 
sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, 
be the blessing and the honor and the 
glory and the dominion, for ever and 
ever"? 









IN THE WORLD OF TODAY 

TT is something to know how the ancient 
Hebrews prayed. God was their great 
Friend, and their simple, earnest speech 
to Him still serves us for a model and an 
inspiration. But our intellectual world 
is very different from theirs. We feel 
problems keenly where they felt none. 
Our wider and more accurate knowledge 
of the world in which we live and move 
has impressed upon many minds a sense 
of the uniformity of nature and the seem- 
ing inexorableness of law, which has given 
the whole question of prayer a new and 
perplexing aspect that the ancient Hebrew 
would not have been able to appreciate 
at all. He believed in a living God, but 
with him this was no empty phrase; it 
denoted a God who could show that He 
was alive by doing within the physical 
world anything He pleased. He had 
created it. He still controlled it, and 
He could use it for His own ends. With 
God all things were possible, nothing was 
too hard for Him. 

We are also impressed, as the Hebrew 
could hardly have been, by speculative 

29 



30 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

difficulties arising out of the nature of 
God Himself. God is unchangeable, we 
say, the same yesterday, today, and 
forever; and what is the use of praying 
to such a One? Can the most earnest 
prayer that ever was offered change the 
Unchangeable? Will the great order es- 
tablished by Him not move inexorably 
on, deaf to all human entreaty? Or 
again, we say that God is omniscient- 
He knows what is in our hearts, He knows 
what we have need of far better than we 
do ourselves; and if He already knows, 
what is the use of our telling Him? Or 
again we may say that He is wise and 
good. He not only knows our needs, 
but He knows how to meet them; and not 
only does He know how to meet them, but 
He desires to meet them. His will is a 
gracious and loving will, more eager even 
to help us than we are to be helped. He 
does not begin to care for men only when 
they begin to pray to Him; and if He wills 
their good, can we suppose that He wills 
it the less for their silence? Many are 
the voices that rise in our hearts, and many 
are the impressions borne in upon us from 
the scientific temper of our time, all 
calculated to shake our faith in the value 
of prayer and to destroy it as a practice. 
Yet pfrayer remains, an irrepressible in- 
stinct, dormant often, it may be, when 



THE WAY OF PRAYER 31 

life runs smoothly, but asserting itself 
sometimes in passionate and anguished 
ways, when the road grows rough and 
dark. 

But what is prayer? What do we seek 
and what do we expect to accomplish, 
when we pray? Prayer has been defined 
as an offering up of our desires unto God 
for things agreeable to His will; but in 
its essence it is not so much the expression 
of our desire for things at all as of our 
desire for God Himself. 

"The whole world wide delights me not, 
For heaven and earth, Lord, care I not, 
If I may have but thee." 

These words may seem to most of us to 
be pitched upon too lofty a level. Average 
men, with no particular interest in religion, 
do find a genuine delight in this world 
and the things thereof; they do care for 
health and strength and opportunity and 
success. But the deeply religious man 
values these things as gifts of God, or as 
avenues to Him, or as opportunities for 
the completer service of Him; he could be 
content with Him apart from them, but 
not with them apart from Him. This 
does not mean that we are not to pray for 
specific things ; our Lord prayed to be 
saved from the hour of His agony, and 
Paul that the thorn should torment his 
flesh no more. But it does mean that 



32 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

our deepest and supreme desire should 
be that not our will, but God's, be done. 

The Father knows what things we have 
need of, but we do not completely know; 
how often have we had to thank Him, it 
may be after many years, for denying us 
the thing for which we had appealed to 
Him with strong crying and tears! In 
the light of our infinite and pathetic 
ignorance it would sometimes seem as if 
specific petitions were hardly worth while, 
and the only prayer worth praying were 
"Thy will be done." This, as we have 
seen, is not the true attitude. "Let your 
requests be made known unto God," 
Paul said to the Philippians — but every 
such request should be begun, continued, 
and ended in the request that the will of 
God be done. The opening petitions of 
the Lord's Prayer are an everlasting re- 
minder that the overshadowing thought 
of all life and of all prayer should be the 
coming of the divine kingdom and the 
doing of the divine will. Our Lord prayed, 
"Save me from this hour"; but deeper 
even than His desire to be saved was His 
desire that the Father's will should be 
done, and His name glorified. "Father, 
glorify thy name." 

True prayer is not an attempt to 
determine the will of God, but the desire 
to be at one with it. We cannot suppose 







THE WAY OF PRAYER 33 

that God, for our much or earnest speaking, 
will be coerced into granting what He 
would otherwise be unwilling to grant. 
It is if we ask anything "according to his 
will" that He heareth us. Nothing, we 
may be sure, will be done against that 
will; it is therefore for us patiently and 
humbly to decipher it, to be alert for 
intimations of it, and to be gratefully 
submissive to it when it has declared itself. 
Too often, in the bottom of our hearts, 
is the desire that our will be triumphant; 
not "Thy will," if it be hard, but mine 
be done. For our request, perhaps for 
the success of a business venture, per- 
haps for the recovery of a friend who is 
sick unto death, seems so natural and 
reasonable. But we pray, when we pray 
truly, not that we may conquer God, 
but that He may conquer us, and that our 
wills may be found not only submissive 
but rejoicing, in harmony with His. Our 
Lord prayed, "If it be possible, let this 
cup pass away from me." He respected 
the limits set by the will of God, and every 
one who would pray reverently must do 
the same. 

Even to the purest and most devoted 
souls, that will may for a time remain 
obscure and inscrutable. Paul prayed, not 
once, nor twice, but thrice, for the removal 
of the thorn; and Jesus offered up prayers 






34 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

and supplications with crying and tears 
that the terrible cup might pass from Him. 
In the strict sense, neither of these prayers 
was answered. The cup had to be drained 
to the dregs — "My God, why hast 
thou forsaken me?" — and the flesh con- 
tinued to be tormented by the thorn. Yet 
in the deepest sense these prayers were 
both answered. Overshadowing the prayer 
for the removal of the cup and the thorn 
was the prayer that the will of God be 
done, and that prayer was abundantly 
answered. By each of the sufferers that 
will was accepted, and in it they found 
strength and peace. Paul learned a more 
abundant experience of the divine grace 
through the strength which he felt to 
possess him even in his weakness, so that 
the very rejection of his prayer became to 
him a gracious and brilliant answer. So 
it was with our Lord. He was heard, as 
the author of the epistle to the Hebrews 
reminds us. The cup was not removed, 
but strength was given Him to drink it. 
From His knees He rose victorious; and 
in the strength that came upon Him after 
the agony of His prayer in the garden, He 
stepped quietly forth to face treachery and 
death. 

" Into the woods my Master went, 
Clean forspent, forspent. 
Into the woods my Master came, 
Forspent with love and shame. 



THE WAY OF PRAYER 35 

** Out of the woods my Master went. 
And He was well content. 
Out of the woods my Master came. 
Content with love and shame/* 

No earnest prayer is ever offered in 
vain. Prayer brings us into the presence 
of God, and the strength and peace of God 
come back upon us. It is undeniable that 
remarkable outward results have been 
achieved by men of earnest prayer. 
Orphanages have been built and main- 
tained, thousands of children supported 
and educated by means of resources which 
those who conducted these enterprises 
regarded beyond the shadow of a doubt 
as sent in answer to believing prayer. 
Possibly most of us have too timid and 
limited a conception of the potentialities 
of prayer in relation to the external 
world. Sir Oliver Lodge has said, for 
example, that "even in medicine, it is 
not really absurd to suggest that drugs 
and no prayer may be almost as foolish 
as prayer and no drugs." A fascinating 
field for study is just beginning here to 
disclose itself. But whatever the possible 
effects of prayer may be upon the world 
without, there can be no manner of doubt 
of its effect upon the man himself. It 
steadies him by ushering him into the 
strong and quiet presence of God. It 
searches him by bringing him face to 
face not only with his God, but akd with 



; 

36 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

himself. The quiet light of eternity falls 
upon his life, and in that light he learns 
to distinguish the things that matter. 
His mind is cleared of false ambitions, his 
fickleness stands rebuked and abashed, 
his whole inner nature is braced and 
purified. He has spoken to his great 
Friend, and now peace and strength are 
his. 

Over and over again has it been seen 
how the man who fortifies himself by 
prayer can face peril or perplexity with 
quietness and confidence, and how some- 
times his confidence infects even those 
about him with a like serenity. Probably 
every man who knows anything of sincere 
prayer knows its power to soothe and ban- 
ish fear. "In nothing be anxious," says 
Paul, "but let your requests be made known 
unto God " ; and the inevitable result will 
be that "the peace of God, which pass- 
eth all understanding, shall stand sentry 
over your hearts and your thoughts. 5 ' 
Nehemiah, as we have seen, experienced 
something of this steadying and strength- 
ening power of prayer in that critical 
moment when he stood before the Per- 
sian king and was asked to name his 
request. After a brief and silent prayer 
to the God of heaven he found cour- 
age to go on (Neh. ii. 4). So it was, 
too, with Paul. When all those dreary 









THE WAY OF PRAYER 37 

days and nights his ship was tossing 
upon the sea, when soldiers and sail- 
ors were losing their heads, and death 
seemed imminent, he it was who retained 
his calmness and courage, and he it was, 
the man of prayer, who spoke the steady- 
ing words which turned confusion into 
order, and reassured the whole company. 
"He gave thanks to God in the presence 
of all and then were they all of good cheer.' 9 
The prayer of such a man falls like a bene- 
diction upon the ear; the very sight of him, 
with that great, quiet strength of his, is an 
inspiration. 

And prayer can steady in temptation 
as surely as in danger. "If God be for 
us, who can be against us?" If we ask 
Him to go with us into our battle, we 
cannot fail to be victorious. Prayer re- 
enforces the higher nature, unlovely things 
slink away in that atmosphere, whatever 
is base in us retreats ashamed and defeated 
in the white light of God's presence. 
As some one has said, either the prayer 
will kill the sin or the sin the prayer; 
but if the prayer be sincere, then the sin 
must die. Temptation may assail us on 
the side of our better nature as well as 
of our worse — in moments of passion, 
but also in moments of exaltation and in 
places of high opportunity and trust; 
but in both cases alike our refuge and 



38 THE WAY OF PRAYER 

defense is in prayer. It protects us from 
conceit and pride and foolish ambition 
no less than from solicitations to the 
grosser sins, and it is just as necessary 
in the one case as in the other. Principal 
George Adam Smith tells of climbing 
one of the Alpine peaks, when, near the 
summit, "exhilarated by the thought of 
the great view awaiting me, but forgetful 
of the high gale that was blowing on the 
other side of the rocks, I sprang eagerly 
up them, and stood erect to see the view. 
The guide pulled me down — ' On your 
knees, Sir; you are not safe there except 
on your knees.' " 

It is very characteristic of the level 
upon which our religious life is pitched 
that, when we speak of prayer, we think 
primarily and almost exclusively of petition. 
The note of thanksgiving is far too seldom 
struck, and even then seldom with the 
passion which inspires our prayers of 
entreaty. Here we have much to learn 
from the Bible with its many calls to 
"give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; 
for his mercy endureth forever"; and 
especially from the New Testament, which 
rejoices evermore in presence of the 
unspeakable Gift. We should learn to 
cultivate the open eye for that goodness 
of God which daily descends upon the 
world and which has filled our own past 



THE WAY OF PRAYER 39 

years. We are ungrateful because we 
do not look upon the wonder of the 
world in which we live, or of the way 
by which we have been led. "With 
thanksgiving " says Paul, "let your requests 
be made known unto God." With what 
clear and grateful eyes did the Hebrews 
look upon the world, which to them was 
resplendent with the love of God! 

" Thy mercy, Lord, is in the heav'ns; 

Thy truth doth reach the clouds; 
Thy justice is like mountains great; 

Thy judgments deep as floods. 
Lord, thou preservest man and beast, 

How precious is thy grace! 
Therefore in shadow of thy wings 

Men's sons their trust shall place." 

There are people not a few who are as 
graceless in their relations to God as to 
the men who do them a favor — people 
to whom it never occurs to say, "Thank 
you." But true religion is happy and 
grateful. Men whose hearts are moved 
as they should be by the goodness of God 
enter into His gates with thanksgiving 
and into His courts with praise; when they 
come before His presence, whether in the 
crowded sanctuary or in the quiet inner 
chamber, it is with joy. It is worth our 
while to cultivate the temper of gratitude, 
and to this end frequently and definitely 
to review our days and discover what 
cause they have brought us for thanks- 






40 



THE WAY OF PRAYER 



giving. Then, slowly, it may be, but 
surely, we shall learn to give thanks, not 
only for sunshine and joy and friendship 
and love, but "always for all things/' — 
even for defeat and disappointment and 
sorrow. We shall learn, not only when the 
Lord hath given but also when the Lord 
hath taken away, to say, "The name of the 
Lord be blessed." 






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